Hierarch
Saint (Hierarch) Hosius of Corduba
ок. 256 — кон. 357 или 358
Also known as: Прп. Осия Кордубский, Осий Кордубский, Оссий, Осия Кордувийский, исповедник, Ossius of Cordova, Hosius the Confessor
Bishop of Corduba (Córdoba, Spain), confessor, adviser of Emperor Constantine the Great, leading figure at the First Ecumenical Council and defender of St Athanasius against the Arians.
Hosius (Ossius) was born in Spain, probably around 256, and became bishop of Corduba around 295. He took part in the Council of Elvira and apparently confessed the faith during the persecution of Diocletian and Maximian, since he later called himself a confessor.
From the 310s he was one of Emperor Constantine's chief advisers on church matters. In 324 he carried the emperor's letter of reconciliation to Alexandria, sided with St Alexander against Arius, and then presided over a council at Antioch. His name heads almost every list of the bishops at Nicaea (325), so he probably presided at the council or some of its sessions. At Serdica (343) he led the Western bishops who acquitted St Athanasius.
Under Constantius II he refused to condemn Athanasius, urged the emperor not to interfere in church affairs and was exiled to Sirmium, where in 357, almost a hundred years old, he signed the second Sirmian formula. St Athanasius attributed this to violence and threats and wrote that Hosius anathematized the Arian heresy before his death in late 357 or 358. He is commemorated on 27 August (9 September, New Style), and since 2018 also in the Synaxis of the Saints of Spain and Portugal.